Laying out walls and wall support structures, including studs, top and bottom plates, and upper and lower tracks, in new buildings under construction, or in existing buildings undergoing renovations or additions, is tedious, time consuming, and expensive. Typically, it has required a significant amount of labor to lay out the construction points at construction sites, including the locations of wood or metal framing elements. Buildings under construction or renovation have floors, ceilings and walls that are not positioned precisely as dimensioned. As an example, the actual elevations of floors and ceilings will vary somewhat from anticipated elevations and will also vary somewhat from location to location. As a consequence, it is necessary to take these variations into account when laying out a building. It has been necessary to measure manually the length for each stud in all of the walls of the building. This process has required teams of workers, with much of the work being accomplished manually, and has been subject to errors. Further, building designs and requirements have become more complex, and construction schedules have become tighter, adding to the need to facilitate and simplify the stud layout process.